


Bring It All, It's Not Enough To Take Me Down

by NeedsMoreAU



Series: Sorikai Week 2020, NeedsMoreAU [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Multi, SoRiKai Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:15:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25711936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeedsMoreAU/pseuds/NeedsMoreAU
Summary: Sorikai week 2020Day 2 - Soulmates
Relationships: Kairi/Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Series: Sorikai Week 2020, NeedsMoreAU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872967
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30
Collections: Sorikai Week





	Bring It All, It's Not Enough To Take Me Down

“I just can’t wait to meet them,” Selphie sighed. The young girl, barely out of kindergarten, was holding court on the beach of the play island. All around her, sitting in the sand, were the rest of the kids; Tidus, Wakka, Sora, and Riku. She was lecturing them on one of her favorite subjects.

Soulmates.

“I just don't get it.” Riku was lying down and staring straight up at the sky, arms clasped behind his head. He turned over to look at Selphie. “What’s so great about them?”

“There's someone out in the world,” She spread her arms wide, gesturing to everything. “Who is perfect for you. And you have to find them. Because when they get hurt, you can feel their pain, so you have to go protect them.”

“Yeah, but like… why?”

“So you can _protect_ them, weren't you even listening?” Selphie pouted. With the toe of her sandal, she kicked some sand on Riku.

“Hey!” He sat up, shaking out his silver hair, like a dog drying itself. Riku frowned. “I'm just saying, it doesn't seem very helpful. All my soulmate does is scrape their knees and drop things on their foot.”

“Wait, you can already feel them?” Selphie screeched. Tidus and Wakka, who so far, had been happy enough to listen quietly while they sat with their feet in the surf, also turned to stare. Riku just shrugged.

“Yeah. Isn’t that what you said, that we feel their pain?”

“My mom said,” Sora piped up. He’d been idly scratching pictures into the ground using a stick, but felt it was important for the other kids to know what his mom said. In Sora’s opinion, his mom was the smartest person in the world. “That at first you just get the bigger hurts, like something life threatening. Then, as you meet and get to know them, the bond deepens, and you start feeling the smaller stuff.” He smiled. “It’s like a measure of how close you are.”

“So, like, if you’re super in love for years, you can feel even the tiniest cuts and pricks.” Selphie, a little miffed by Sora stealing her thunder, grabbed ahold of the conversation, turning everyone's attention back to her.

“So I guess I already know my soulmate.” Riku shrugged again. Recently he’d been trying to act cooler, like all this cutesy stuff was beneath him. If he was ever going to leave here and go on the adventure he’d been daydreaming about, he would need to be unflappable.

Judging by the butterflies in his stomach, he hadn't quite succeeded.

“Rikuuu,” Sora whined. “You don't think it’s even a least a little sweet?”

“Whatever.”

“Hey!” Sora leaned down, and punched him in the shoulder.

It wasn't particularly hard. Maybe it was all the talk of soulmates. Or maybe they had just been not paying enough attention before, when Riku fell from the tree he was climbing or Sora had twisted an ankle running down the beach. Maybe they had both known, but just been too willing to brush it off as coincidence.

But when both the boys yelled “Ow!” at the exact same time, there was only one conclusion to come to.

Selphie’s hands flew to her mouth and she let out a high pitch squee.

“You two are soulmates!”

She immediately turned and slugged Wakka.

“AH! Selphie!”

“Sorry, just had to test. Hey, Tidus-”

“Oh no,” He had already scrambled to his feet and was backing away. “No, no thank you.”

“Too late!” she cackled, chasing after him. Tidus and Wakka turned and ran.

Which left Sora and Riku sitting in the sand together, neither one quite sure what to say.

Riku was just trying to figure out how to make words when Sora slammed into him, hugging him tightly.

“Riku,” His hands curled into fists, scrunching the fabric of his shirt. Riku almost thought he was crying, but then Sora looked up at him, and Riku saw he was laughing, a shy smile on his face. “Soulmates?”

Tentatively, Riku hugged him back.

“Yeah. Soulmates.”

-

“So, what do you think the other one’s like?”

Riku and Sora were, respectively, leaning and sitting against the swoopy trunk of the island's paopu tree as they stared out at the horizon that seemed like the only thing holding them back. A soft wind was blowing.

“The other one?”

“You know,” Sora explained, kicking his legs like he was still a little kid (He was now just a medium sized kid). “Our other soulmate.”

Riku hummed thoughtfully. They both knew that they had another soulmate. It wasn’t common, but once or twice a year they could feel the sting of some injury, when neither of them hadn't actually gotten hurt. And it felt different somehow, those rare instances where they felt their other, like they were calling from somewhere far away. It wasn't familiar, like Sora’s clumsy falls or Riku’s sparring bruises, the feelings that had become more and more common after over a decade of friendship, but it wasn’t unpleasant either. It was always nice, hearing from them after months of silence, even if it made Sora and Riku want to tear apart the skies just to stand by their side.

“I bet they’re kind,” Riku started. “Like you.”

“I think they’ll be strong, like you.”

Riku stared off, wondering if Sora felt the same as he did, that urge to sail to the ends of the world to find this person, to complete the three of them.

“Yeah. Whoever they are, they’re our soulmate.”

(Barely a week later, when both Riku and Sora awoke in the middle of the night to feel burning, falling, crashing, lost, they knew exactly what it meant, though if anyone had tried to ask the two young boys why they were out of bed and racing down the beach, rocketing ahead of the mayor and his investigation team, they would undoubtedly get no answer. Because the boys couldn't explain why they knew the girl who fell from the sky anymore than they could explain how she got there to begin with. All they knew was that when Sora pushed through the throng of adults, Riku on his heels, and wrapped the little girl in a big hug, it felt like a lost puzzle piece clicking into place. It felt like coming home.)

-

Over the years, it wouldn't be an unsafe assumption to think those three kids couldn't tell their own pain from their best friends. In fact, many people did assume that, not even stopping to worry if they had bumped into her when Kairi stumbled in the marketplace, because it was just as likely that, halfway across the island, Sora had just run into a door frame. The way they felt each other, down to the tiniest papercut, was almost unnatural, according to some folks. Some shook their heads, saying that that kind of codependence wasn't healthy. But mostly, the islanders smiled, and let the kids run about tied together at the hip. Most of them recalled when they had first met their own soulmates, and remembered that bond. The majority of the islanders grinned when the gaggle raced by, hand in hand, and swore there wasn’t a thing on earth that could separate those kids.

Of course, on one stormy night, they were proven very wrong.

-

Riku hated the way Kairi wasn’t there.

Her body was there, laid out on a stone table like a medical patient, but through their bond, there was nothing, not even the smallest itch or discomfort.

Sora was still there, accruing new bruises every day, as he journeyed around, so he was safe, in a roundabout kind of way. But Kairi was gone, eyes blank and unmoving.

It drove Riku mad.

And to get her back, to feel her life in the corners of his own, he was willing to do a lot. Like ignoring the twinges of pain that came from Sora, unleashing monsters upon him and fighting the urge to step in and defend (He made that mistake, once. In the whale's stomach, when the acid burning around Sora’s ankles got too much and he just had to pick up his sword and dive into the fray. Inside of him, a dark piece that he didn't recognize sneered in a voice that wasn’t his own.) He tried. He really did. He ran himself ragged trying to get Kairi back, waded through the wounds that broadcasted from Sora like an SOS signal.

But when they came face to face, when they finally fought, not even gritting his teeth and reminding himself ‘this is for Kairi’ was enough to keep him on his feet.

He collapsed, and the piece in his heart grinned, wrestling the controls away from him.

After that, he didn’t feel anything, from either of them.

-

Kairi was back on the islands for a long, lonely year. She knew something was wrong. It had to be. Her soulmate, the boy with silver hair who she could remember spending so many childhood days with, he was gone, and he was hurting. No one seemed concerned. They just shrugged, telling her that “Your Riku there, he’s always had a little bit of wanderlust. He’ll come home when he’s good and ready.” Which didn't make sense to Kairi, he was lost, he was in _trouble_. She could feel it like it was her own body that ached as she fell into bed every night, exhausted after a day of battling.

Then there were the headaches.

She would get them in all hours of the day, regardless of how much she slept or drank water or took painkillers. It felt like someone picking apart her brain, careful fingers that poked and prodded and pushed against her skull. All the time. It wasn't Riku. It wasn't her.

But she couldn't make herself believe that she had a second soulmate out there.

That would make the loneliness just feel all the bigger with their absence.

Of course, the memories came flooding back eventually, and she could feel Sora again, and even though her wrist throbbed, she knew Riku was alright too. She didn't have anything to do but wait.

On the islands, and anywhere in the worlds, harming oneself was the biggest taboo. You just couldn't do that, not only damaging yourself but also your soulmates. It was unacceptable. But Kairi would be lying if she said that when she picked up sparring again, it didn't make her feel just a little bit better to touch scrapes and sore muscles. She might not be out there fighting, but she was working just as hard, being felt and seen by her soulmates.

And when she did get swept up in the adventure, she knew how to defend herself too. She took her stance beside Riku and Sora, keyblade raised proudly.

This time, she would protect them.

-

There were a lot of fights in their lives, burdens shared and Curas cast exactly when they were needed because their partners always _knew_. But they found some good friends along the way.

Like Lea, who, when he opened the door to their room in the mysterious tower to ask Riku _exactly_ what he remembered from that fight with the real organization, didn't even bat an eye at the fact the three of them were sprawled out on the floor.

“Are we just chilling?” He lowered himself to sit against the doorframe, taking in the three guardians lying there across each other, hands intertwined.

“No,” Kairi groaned. “It's my time of the month.”

“My condolences.”

“Thanks, Lea,” Sora dutifully flashed him a lazy thumbs up. Then, he went back to curling up next to Riku, looking vaguely nauseated.

“So…” Lea wasn't quite sure how to broach the topic. “You guys are soulmates?”

“Yup,” Riku rolled over.

“And that’s not… Hard?” Lea shook his head. He could barely handle having one soulmate, much less two. Unconsciously, his hand flew to his face, tracing the X that wasn't there.

To fight this battle, to fight this _war_ , the three of them were going to have to take some hits. They were going to have to get toe-to-toe with beings of pure darkness. And doing all that while shouldering the pain of two soulmates, not on the sideline, but fighting alongside you?

Not for the first time, Lea wondered why the burden of protecting the universe had to fall on a bunch of kids.

“We’re alright, Lea,” Sora assured him. Though it was kind of hard to take the guardian of light seriously when he was snuggled in a fuzzy blanket and speaking up from a cuddle pile on the floor. But there was determination in his eyes. Lea knew, somehow instinctively, that this was a conversation the three of them had already been through. That asking Sora or Kairi or Riku not to fight would be like asking the ocean not to lap at the shores or touch the horizon. These kids weren't going to let anyone else fight their battles. It reminded Lea of someone else, of two faces, one of which he could barely remember. He frowned and shook his head, trying to clear the static from his mind.

But in the end, as he stood up and left the three of them to cuddle and commiserate (His questions could wait, after all), he was quietly hopeful, smiling to himself like he hadn't in a long time.

Those kids would be alright.

They had each other.


End file.
